of gyros, brawls, records, and resurrections

Things that happened this weekend.

driving around running errands, listening to Subrosa with a fellow lover of big riffs who's not so much a friend so much as an enjoyable occasional acquaintance because we only hang out when circumstantials bring us together but when they do we have a great time.

Worked Record Store Day again this year and marveled at the weirdness, got paid in vinyl and was introduced to this fine band.

Ate gyros and skipped stones at the metroparks with the Kentinistas, listened to Creedence, basked in the sun, plotted future summer adventures mostly involving baseball games and MST3K nights.

 Hung out with family.
Found out there was a pretty big melee up the street from me thanks to some crazy-ass hardcore youth crew kids, not, as the commentariat on the local media newsrag suggests, "death metal wannabe thugs and their groupies." Sad that Metalsucks has a better summary than the local news outlet. Somehow end up on an 80's hardcore kick anyway even though my days of those kinds of pits are far behind me.

Me and Neighbor heard about the incident via the cops at our favorite diner, decided to drive past the aftermath, being all nosy and making Warriors and Outsiders jokes because no one got killed as far as his Spacephone told us and there were a bunch of straightedge kids carrying on a scene that I came late to ten years ago but they still like all those bands with the breakdowns. The party antics of The Supersuckers opening for the Toadies promoted a more traditional rock and roll lifestyle and Eddie Spaghetti live comes across as Lemmy Via Texas and it was fantastic even if we were all the way in the back and the crowd was mostly there for the headliner and wasn't sure what this tongue-in-cheekness was all about.

Sunday morning I wished I was in a better mood playing songs but such is life. Came home and slept on the porch, went to the folks' and ate too much, came home and slept early. Monday doesn't feel so bad.

things I never thought would happen

As mentioned in the previous post, there were two awesome shows going on in Fair Clevelandia on Wednesday night. As such, I went over to the gallery in Chinatown because my friend putting on the Evens show said he might need some help getting everything ready. So it doesn't seem so weird and awkward when I'm shaking hands with one of my early-adulthood heroes, because we're moving a wrought-iron canopy thing to the side, figuring out the logistics of the stage, and loading equipment and merch up a freight elevator.

I felt a little embarrassed when it was disclosed that I might be seeing someone else play that night but I ended up sticking around, sent his sister down the street to my favorite source of pad thai, watched the soundcheck, drinking cans of coconut water instead of eating dinner, working the door, taking money and distributing wristbands and then watching the show.

The fans were almost all my age or older, a few straightedge kids, a couple of families, people wearing t-shirts of 80's punk and hardcore and metal bands. I got to watch the show, sang along with the songs I knew, songs that were tightly wound on record and full of intensity live and relevant to the troubled times that we find ourselves in, of increased paranoia and surveillance and instability.

We were encouraged to sing along though I think a lot of us are way more familiar with the old bands, but everyone knew better than to say so. And he went on a digression about how awful drones are and how awful our powers that be are for continuing to use them to traumatize Pakistanis so mad props for that. He gave shoutouts to Charles and me and I'm glad no one knows who I am, because I'm pretty sure I blushed because this is something I never imagined would happen, ever.

Afterwards, I ended up running into a fellow congregant from church, of all people, the guy who is 75 and a former southern baptist minister from Alabama whose son is friends with a bunch of Dischordians and who invited him to the show. I always wondered why he liked my Billy Bragg take on the trad hymns and it makes way more sense now. The smallness of the world is kind of mind-blowing.

We marvel at this, and trade stories of DC and Cleveland with Ian's sister while I watched a line of kids take pictures and get their albums signed. I picked up the records too, but felt too shy there but got a parting shot in the parking lot because I want to remember this. We helped them load up at the end of the night, exchanged goodbyes, and hugs and I drove home too euphoric to sleep, so I hung Christmas lights on my balcony and talked on the phone because it was so beautiful out.

And then I wake up, clean the apartment, hang out with the family, and head over to the neighbors across the border to watch the fireworks, which I missed because my beater was turned away at their nice apartment building, so I missed most of the pyrotechnics but got to watch 'The Warriors' and talk tuneage so all was good. Eight hours of sleep in the past two days. It's a good thing it's dead at work today, though I think I'm still running off of afterglow and caffeine.